Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto specifically to take financial technology to the next level, contesting the financial sector. Banks are so engrained in common lifestyle that no one except for PayPal has tried to put up an alternative. With banks all over the world now in direct competition with Bitcoin, it’s normally expected for […]

This article is a guest post written by Valery Kholodkov, Lead Researcher at AVG Innovation Lab in Amsterdam. Valery is on the forefront of AVG’s privacy-related research and he is constantly looking into how emerging technologies impact user privacy. It’s no secret that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are showing us brand new opportunities in the digital industry and the way things can evolve there, and not only that. If you attended the annual Bitcoin conference in 2014, you may have noticed plenty of enthusiastic and curious faces from all kind of industries that are looking for the answer to what Bitcoin and blockchain technology can do for them. With Bitcoin we’re going back to 1990s: huge opportunities are seen on the […]

After a very successful Central European Bitcoin Expo in Vienna, the new opportunity to build, expand your business partnerships, meet new people and enjoy atmosphere of special event is coming. The same organizers are preparing a remarkable event BitcoinExpo 2014 in Shanghai. The Expo is going to take place on 19th – 21th September. The Expo has already many confirmed speakers such as Jean-Marie Mognetti, Aaron Koenig, Leon Li, Vitalik Buterin, Martin Westhead, Brett Stapper and many other special people from the world of Bitcoin and Digital Currencies. One of the main aims of BitcoinExpo 2014 is to break new ground for Western companies in China by connecting them to local key players and securing their exposure within the local […]

Bitcoin users around the world are reporting that Bitcoin payments are now accepted everywhere on Overstock.com. In August, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne promised to release the highly popular functionality on 9/5/14; however, much to the chagrin of many potential customers, his company missed that deadline. Unlike other companies that have only extended their Bitcoin acceptance […]

The Bank of England has devoted twopapers to the rise of digital currencies. It's another demonstration of Bitcoin's transformation from niche cyber-libertarian intrigue to a subject of mainstream interest.

More significantly, the Bank suggests that the key innovation is not the digital currency itself — which is subject to wild fluctuations — but the "distributed ledger," which tracks Bitcoin transactions. That ledger has the potential to revolutionize the financial system, the bank argues.

Although there has been a great deal of innovation and new technology in payment systems, the Bank says "the basic structure of centralised payment systems has remained unchanged." At the core of the system is a central ledger (usually a central bank) that records and settles transactions.

Bitcoin, and other digital currencies, works on a completely different decentralized model. Instead of a central ledger digital (crypto)currencies operate with a publicly visible ledger, with copies shared between all participants. The advantage of this system is that it avoids the problem of people spending the same money multiple times without having to have centralized monitoring of the process. Or as the Bank puts it:

Since anybody can check any proposed transaction against the ledger, this approach removes the need for a central authority and thus for participants to have confidence in the integrity of any single entity.

This removes two key risks of a centralized system — credit risk and liquidity risk. Credit risk arises where one of the banks in a system goes bust, leaving unpaid debts to other institutions in the system. Liquidity risk comes about when a firm is fundamentally sound (it has the necessary assets to pay off its debts) but at a particular time it is unable to convert those assets to cash in order to meet its debt payments.

The decentralized system should be resilient to these problems as at any given time there should be as many "redundant backups" (non-active contributors) as there are current contributors to the network. As such there should be far fewer choke points that lead to a system-wide problem.

But the exciting part of this is that this technology could have implications far beyond payment systems alone. The Bank provides some fascinating hints for just how wide the applications of this could be (emphasis mine):

The majority of financial assets — such as loans, bonds, stocks and derivatives — now exist only in electronic form, meaning that the financial system itself is already simply a set of digital records ... This development could allow any type of financial asset, for example shares in a company, to be recorded on a distributed ledger.

Bitcoin may only be temporary phenomenon but the technology that underpins it may soon become ubiquitous. According to the Bank, it could mark "a first attempt at an 'internet of finance.'"

Overstock.com was the first major online retailer to embrace bitcoin, accepting payments in the digital currency here in the U.S. beginning in early January. And now, it’s the first to accommodate bitcoin across the globe.

Although Bitcoin is only a few years old, enough has happened with it that one could write a whole textbook and then some. However, it’s difficult to write one, because everything is changing constantly. CNN Money’s Jose Pagliery wrote a book on Bitcoin, and it certainly seems thorough. The book’s called Bitcoin and the Future […]

Obama Authorizes Strikes On ISIS. "President Barack Obama outlined a new, expanded strategy to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the extremist group calling itself the Islamic State (also know as ISIS or ISIL) with a primetime speech Wednesday night," reported BI's Brett Logiurato and Hunter Walker. "In his remarks, Obama broke his plan down into four key parts: 'a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists,' providing 'support to forces fighting these terrorists on the ground,' stepped up counterterrorism efforts to 'prevent ISIL attacks,' and continued 'humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians who have been displaced by this terrorist organization.'"

A Problematic Analogy. Obama compared his plan to strategies targeting terrorist groups in Somalia and Yemen. Immediately, NBC correspondent Richard Engel slammed this analogy. "It's not at all the situation we are seeing in Iraq and Syria," Engel said. Engel explained ISIS is made up of a large force of tens of thousands of fighters, controlling an area he said was approximately the size of Maryland with at least 8 million residents in that area, noted BI's Logiurato. "It's much more akin to regime change than it is to wading back and picking targets with allied forces," Engel said. "They are not comparable at all."

The Royal Bank Of Scotland Will Move If... ...Scottish voters voted Yes on Scottish independence. "As part of such contingency planning, RBS believes that it would be necessary to re-domicile the Bank's holding company and its primary rated operating entity (The Royal Bank of Scotland plc) to England," the bank said in a statement. "In the event of a 'Yes' vote, the decision to re-domicile should have no impact on everyday banking services used by our customers throughout the British Isles."

George Soros Warns Against Scottish Independence. In a new piece for the FT, the legendary financier warned that Scottish independence would do serious damage to Europe as a U.K. exit from the E.U. is another possibility further down the road. Here's Soros: "This is the worst possible time for Britain to consider leaving the EU – or for Scotland to break with Britain. The EU is an unfinished project of European states that have sacrificed part of their sovereignty to form an ever-closer union based on shared values and ideals. Those shared values are under attack on multiple fronts. Russia’s undeclared war against Ukraine is perhaps the most immediate example but it is by no means the only one. Resurgent nationalism and illiberal democracy are on the rise within Europe, at its borders and around the globe."

Markets Are Lower. In Europe, Britain's FTSE is down 0.4%, France's CAC 40 is down 0.3%, and Germany's DAX is flat. Asia closed mix with Japan's Nikkei up 0.7% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng down 0.1%. U.S. futures are in the red with Dow futures down 50 points and S&P futures down 6 points.

IEA Warns Of Remarkable Slowdown. The International Energy Agency cut its outlook for global oil demand, saying it would increase by 1.3% or 1.2 billion barrels per day to 93.8 billion barrels per day in 2015. “The recent slowdown in demand growth is nothing short of remarkable,” the IEA said. “While demand growth is still expected to gain momentum, the expected pace of recovery is now looking somewhat more subdued.”

Chinese Inflation Cools. China's consumer price index fell to 2.0% in August from 2.3% in July. This was below expectations for 2.2%. Producer prices fell to -1.2% from -0/9%, missing expectations for -2.2%. "Inflation is well-controlled, and the limited public data on labor market dynamics suggest continued low unemployment. August data so far in hand - the CPI and PPI reports, PMIs, and trade data - hint that headline real GDP growth is picking up in the third quarter of 2014, and suggest a new round of government stimulus is unlikely in 2014," PNC Financial economist Bill Adams said.

Australian Labor Market Surges. The Australian economy added a whopping 121,000 jobs in August, which was much stronger than the 15,000 expected by economists. However, AMP Capital economist warned the "jobs figures are as unbelievably positive as [the] July surge in unemployment to 6.4% was unbelievably negative. Best taken as statistical noise..."

German Inflation Is Stuck At A Four-And-A-Half-Year Low. Germany's consumer price inflation was unchanged and in line with expectations at 0.8% year-over-year in August. "Inflation pressures in the eurozone largest economy are still weak, but a 1.9% year-over-year decline in energy prices is still a notable negative influence," noted Pantheon Macroeconomics' Claus Vistesen. "Excluding energy, the annual rate of inflation would have been 1.2%, which is still low but also indicative of slightly stronger core prices."

Ebola Is Taking An Economic Toll. "Sierra Leone has cut its 2014 economic growth forecast to 7 or 8 percent as an Ebola outbreak cripples business in the iron ore-exporting West African country, the government said on Wednesday," reported Reuters' Umaru Fofana. "The economic outlooks for Guinea and Liberia, two other mining-dependent West African countries also fighting Ebola, were lowered by Standard Chartered Bank."

Sir Richard Branson, one of the wealthiest men in the United Kingdom (well, in the entire world) had an interview with Bloomberg News (view the video interview below). A remarkable one as the entrepreneur and founder of Virgin took a clear stance on Bitcoin and virtual currencies. Bitcoin is working Branson had shown his support […]

Google has been hacked and 5 million Gmail credentials have been exposed on the Russian website “Bitcoin Security“. The leakage was discovered after a Reddit user submitted credentials on a Reddit sub forum. Daily Mail reports that most of the hacked Gmail-accounts were English, Russian and Spanish. It’s estimated that 60% of the accounts were […]

The Bitcoin Price has retreated away from yesterday’s local high near its two-week upper channel trendline. Trade is seemingly indecisive around its weekly pivot “safety blanket” and the coming European and US sessions should set the direction and thereby clarify the trend. Bitcoin Price Dual Targets Bitstamp Hourly Chart The Bitstamp chart shows how trade […]

In a really big deal for San Francisco-based Coinbase, one of the world’s leading Bitcoin wallets and merchant processing platforms, the startup is opening its doors to European customers in 13 countries. This will be its long-awaited first foray outside of the U.S. The company is one of the biggest Bitcoin wallets in the world with 1.6 million customers, 36,000 merchants including… Read More